Robert Verdon, #51, The Cacophonous State

… adverts insaner than Pyongyang t.v., or

Tosca Woolley’s play, Lady Van der Meer’s Wind,

wake me and I find myself on a jam-packed bus

travelling into Newie as the railway’s been ripped up,

and I wonder where we are going, as a society;

but it is time to get off and go to work amid the blare of

a million loudspeakers all screaming about home furnishings

and much the same at the ad-emblazoned work station,

except that here in the Department of Productive Ideas,

free of coal dust, coffins, and hot metallic blasts,

they are mercifully silent.